Software for project planning/tracking in house construction

You don't want to let more in there. Otherwise, craftsmen would manipulate or delete data,

By the way, this is one of the biggest disadvantages of the much-praised Excel. To quote the saying: If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. It is not suitable for that. Period. If you absolutely want to misuse it as a notepad, fine, but that does not make it a PM tool, and that's what was asked for here.

I throw miro into the ring. Basically an online whiteboard. With tasks, you can also replicate the basic functions of a Trello or similar. Also quite usable for such a purpose even in the free version.

So if it’s really about clean project management, I would stay away from Excel & Co. [...] I would definitely opt for an (online) PM tool like Monday, Asana, Trello, Meistertask, ...

As much as I share your disdain for the favorite semi-pro tools of time-cutters – all that online stuff also has two huge drawbacks. 1. Their design requires participants across all permission levels to agree to engage exclusively online with the documents. Unfortunately, corresponding to the lack of willingness, there is a lack of compatibility of file formats. So you have to register for the solution and cannot use it via a “competing platform.” Messenger and groupware solutions dare such insolence – just imagine that for telephone calls, I could only chat with my aunt (also with Vodafone), but not with my mother (with Telekom). So the only export option is often printing (on paper or PDF). 2. Due to this lack of interworking between similar systems from different providers, the circle of willing participants is limited. I do not clutter my home screens with umpteen unified messengers. I have two of them (and WhatsApp is not one – simply because I don’t want to know what the kittens of the Zalando-Prosecco faction in my circle of acquaintances had to eat today). Potential clients with the desire that I open a third such channel unfortunately have to manage without me. It won’t be much different for good craftsmen; most of them play pretty much in my conservatism league.

So, with most tools of this kind, you can even export data to Excel, etc., but of course the solution lives from being used equally by everyone. However, this is no different than with Excel, PDF, etc., only the distribution is greater there – and meanwhile also the number of third-party tools, albeit sometimes still with questionable support quality. I am not aware of any open standard for storing project metadata, but even if there were such a thing, several compatible clients would have to exist to enable every employee to use HIS tool. With Excel, no one asks for this individuality. :D

In the end, Excel is probably so popular because it represents the lowest common denominator, but this would definitely be too limited for me to do proper project management. Of course, if the demands are lower, the attractiveness of a specialized solution diminishes, but that does not make it worse.

But of course, the solution lives from being used equally by everyone.

Again, who else should use it besides the builders? Maybe the master craftsman who asked me whether I wanted the offer by mail or fax? The executing craftsmen who always say "I have to ask the boss / you have to discuss it with the boss"? All the craftsmen whose written word you can't distinguish from that of a primary school student?

Or am I supposed to create colorful reports for my own house building project to show how many tickets I have processed? Sorry, but I see hardly any added value in that. And yes, I use such tools extensively professionally. And it only works there because real teams with more than two people use them and where everyone can be obliged to use them.

At the end of the day, it's just about keeping track of a big list of to-dos. Whether you arrange them now on colorful boards, add deadlines, link dependencies, etc. is mostly gimmickry. What you need for the topic of house building you can achieve with the basic functions of any run-of-the-mill tool.

In the planning phase, I calculated the monetary aspects with Excel, as I am fluent in it. Later, when the invoices came in and often looked different than planned, because we had some additional wishes here and there, I no longer enjoyed it. Instead, I enjoyed working with the Ninox database and built myself a convenient filing archive. The carpenter made the schedule and the professional construction coordination, and I had access to it. That was very convenient. The most important things are communication and binding agreements. Speak directly and record in writing – personal conversation, phone, and email. Today, I would probably use Teams extensively.